Guest post by Josh Levine, Founder and Chief Experience Officer, Alexander Interactive.

Redesigning a website is a daunting task.  Budget, deadlines, resources, features, content, platform changes, brand perception, SEO implications – the list of challenges is a long one.  The potential impact website redesign has on your organization is as enormous and critical as the process.  Will conversion go up or down?  Will your new site attract more visitors or will traffic drop off?

Before investing considerable time, money and soul into a redesign, it is important to critically evaluate why you are redesigning your site, and why you are redesigning right now.

People often think of design longevity based on x number of years after a redesign launches, but the truth is there is no ready-made formula.  Use the guidelines below to get a clear rationale (that makes business sense) for when and why to undertake a site redesign.  Gather up your traffic metrics, usage patterns, test results, industry research and customer feedback – and keep reading.

Redesign for Scalability: Accommodate Growth Gracefully

I bet your site looked and worked exactly how you wanted it to the day it launched a few years ago.  But how does it perform now?  In the interim, you may have tacked on new browsing functionality, made navigation changes, expanded products and content, and integrated offerings from third-party vendors.  Each change was intended to improve conversion, stickiness or increase traffic.  But in the aggregate, your site has gotten unwieldy.

Your site should be able to accommodate growth and evolve with your business.  If the “Frankenstein factor” is taking over, it may be time to redesign.

Redesign for Adaptability: Keep Your Site Flexible

Having a site that can accommodate your evolving business needs is crucial.  Setting up a sale, for example, should take hours, not days or weeks.  Changing an add-to-cart button from green to red and implementing a quick A/B test should be feasible without five meetings with your IT department.  Your site should be able to be easily updated and maintained by business users.

Redesign to Modernize: Rejuvenate Your Brand

Developing a visual design that attracts users while simultaneously fulfilling your brand and business goals is a tall order.  Doing so as your business evolves is tougher still.  But the visual design is your public face.  If your site feels stale, uninviting and unmemorable, it probably is, and it’s time to change—you’d do the same thing for your physical office or reception area.

There’s more to a redesign than just beautifying the website.  Consider typography, readability, scan-ability, visual hierarchy and clarity.  These behind-the-scenes components are arguably as important as integrating up-to-date design styles.

Chelsea Clock redesign

Redesign for Your Customer: Deliver Based on What They Tell You

Your customers are trying to tell you what works on your site –through what and how they are ordering, where they are dropping out of the transaction funnel, and through feedback from comments and customer service calls.  Keep it user-friendly by observing and listening to them. Redesigning around customer feedback is essential.  Try doing a survey, a focus group or a usability study, and deep-diving into your metrics.

Sometimes your customers may want things that won’t add to your bottom line. A good way of validating customer suggestions is through A/B testing, which provides a quantitative check on the qualitative feedback you are receiving.

Redesign for Retention: Keep Your Site Shopper-Focused

Step back for a moment and consider the following questions:

• Do you truly understand your shopper?  Do you know the various shopper types and their respective personalities, aspirations, backgrounds, preferences and tastes?
• What contexts and environments do they live in?  Are they social?  Introverts?  Small town or big city?
• How do they think and interact in the real world?
• What is their communication style?
• Are they experts?  Do they need hand-holding and explanation?
• Do they like pudding?  Flan?  Smoked fish?

Your site architecture must cater to your customers; your content and labeling should speak their language.  Your UI should anticipate their needs and limitations.  Your navigation structure should allow for customers to shop the way they want to shop – not how you think they should.  Be there when they need you, and by gosh, get the heck out of their way when they don’t.

Mighty Leaf Tea’s navigation structure addresses their customers’ needs and preferences by enabling them to shop by caffeine, mood, region, ingredients.

Logitech invites the shopper to explore by appealing to their personality and tastes.

Redesign for Behavior: Accommodate Social Media

It’s human nature – people’s decisions are influenced by other people’s opinions.  Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites have capitalized on this phenomenon.  So should you.

Integrating social sharing and interaction features with your site will increase traffic and sales. Some sites recognize that their audience is actively “social” and do a redesign to focus the shopping experience almost entirely around this concept.  Different businesses need different amounts of social exposure, but almost every site can benefit from it in some way.

Redesign for Features: Capitalizing on Tech Advances

As web languages have matured, things once impossible are now the norm.  What’s important is making technology work for your customer—and for your business.

In fact, your site can define how you run your business, giving structure to your business process.  Consider the following:

• Location-based functionality, such as Gowalla
• Third-party collective intelligence/collaborative filtering engines, such as Baynote
• Integrate reviews using functionality such as Bazaarvoice
• Introduce new methods for browsing and finding products through the use of rich DHTML and AJAX technologies
• Speed up your page load times by applying the latest techniques in HTML, CSS and image performance
• Offer compelling new features that reflect ongoing trends, such as the social media service Shoutlet

Through ajax and dhtml, we implemented functionality on Kaptest.com that allowed customers to quickly and easily find and compare courses making it easier to find the perfect class that fits their needs.

Evaluating your site through the lenses above can provide a concrete indication of whether now is the right time to redesign.  How to effectively redesign based on the considerations above is a much broader topic, however the ideas above will give you some good conversation starters.  Shoot me an email when you launch.

Josh Levine is co-founder and chief experience officer for Alexander Interactive.  He has created successful web initiatives for some of the world’s most prestigious brands, including Citigroup, Pepperidge Farm, Continental Airlines, Dell, Campbell’s Soup, Liz Claiborne, Kaplan, and Virgin Mobile.  Josh is actively involved in charity work, primarily with the March of Dimes.  He lives in New York, N.Y. with his wife, daughter, son and Mayor Jack Reynolds, Ai’s VP of security and integrity.  Josh runs a 49-minute mile and once owned a pig named Vincent (may he rest in peace).

• design
• redesign
• scalability
• shopping